MURA · THE COLLECTION · THOMAS COLE

The Oxbow

Thomas Cole's 1836 view of the Connecticut River from Mount Holyoke, painted in a few weeks for the National Academy of Design's spring exhibition. Its full title is "View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow". The canvas, 130.8 by 193 centimetres, has been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1908.

Thomas Cole · 1836 · Oil on canvas · Romanticism · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

Wikipedia describes the composition moving "from a dark wilderness with shattered tree trunks on rugged cliffs in the foreground covered with violent rain clouds on the left to a light-filled and peaceful, cultivated landscape on the right", bordered by the bend of the river. It has been read as a confrontation between wilderness and civilisation. Cole painted himself as a tiny figure at his easel on the rocks in the foreground, and logging scars on the far hillside have been read, since Matthew Baigell first noticed them, as Hebrew letters spelling "Noah". Mura's catalogue describes storm clouds giving way to sunlight over the broad bend in the river.

How it was painted

Cole (1801–1848), born in Lancashire and the founder of the Hudson River School, was in 1836 struggling with "The Course of Empire", a five-painting series for his patron Luman Reed. Reed suggested he set it aside and paint something for the April exhibition. Cole replied in March 1836: "Fancy pictures seldom sell & they generally take more time than views so I have determined to paint one of the latter. I have already commenced a view from Mt. Holyoke—it is about the finest scene I have in my sketchbook & is well known." He used a larger canvas than intended because he could not ready a smaller frame in time. The panorama was wider than a single sketch could hold, so Cole stitched together two separate views from the summit into one synthetic image. He married Maria Bartow of Catskill the same year and settled there.

Where it went

Cole sold the painting at the exhibition to Charles Nicoll Talbot (1802–1874), a merchant in the China trade, who lent it to the Dunlap Benefit Exhibition in 1838 and to the Artists' Fund Society in 1862. After his death it was acquired by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, wife of Russell Sage, who gave it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1908. The credit line is Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908, accession number 08.228. It hangs in Gallery 759 of the American Wing.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to the Coast & Countryside collection with the mood "majestic": weather passing over a river, the kind of view a window gives and a screen can hold.